Trump: ‘The Houthis want peace because they’re getting the hell knocked out of them’

US President Donald Trump claims Yemen’s Houthi rebels now “want peace” after more than a week of US airstrikes, which he says have “been very, very strong.”

“The Houthis are looking to do something. They want to know, ‘How do we stop? How do we stop? How can we have peace?’ The Houthis want peace because they’re getting the hell knocked out of them,” he says.

“The Houthis are dying for peace. They don’t want this… They were knocking ships out of the ocean…. In the Suez Canal, they only have about 20% of the ships going through. They have to go through a different way, which takes weeks of travel, and that really affects commerce.”

“But the Houthis have been hit hard, and they want to negotiate peace,” Trump continues. “The Houthis have been horrible to the world. They’ve killed a lot of people and knocked out a lot of ships and planes and anything else… They have been hit harder than they have ever been.”

He suggests the US strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen may continue for some time.

“They want us to stop so badly… They’ve got to say, ‘No mas.’ But I can only say that the attacks every day, every night… have been very successful beyond our wildest expectations… We’re going to do it for a long time. We can keep it going for a long time,” Trump says.

Trump also backs his embattled National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after a scandal erupted over top security officials’ use of a civilian messaging app to discuss an imminent air attack on the Houthis.

“It was Mike, I guess, I always thought it was Mike,” Trump tells reporters in the Oval Office. He says Hegseth “is doing a great job, he had nothing to do with this,” while branding criticism a “witch hunt.”